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Donald Trump 2018

TheFlyingBoat

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M12BH
M12BH

SInce y'all seem to be my clearinghouse for all things political, let me tell a story.  A couple of them, actually.  Three, if you want to be specific. When I was 14 I went with a family frien

ConferenceRoom
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brown water
brown water

Slocum’s Razor

GRHorn

GRHorn 105

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Back from your swim already? Ready to answer my question yet?

Sorry.  I figured we have no chance at any kind of agreement so I didn’t bother.  Here you go.  A quick summary I found from a few years back.  Plenty of links for you to click.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-director-john-brennan-lied-senate

 

40 minutes ago, Nivek said:

I am sure most people follow 500 twitter accounts.

I like twitter.  Great resource for news about just about anything.

 

44 minutes ago, bolverk said:

1) If you claim to not know who DSA is, then you were never really active on shaggy. DSA was an active poster on multiple boards - not just in the CR. How did you come across surly on the date we made the switch?

2) You should stop following Russian propaganda on Twitter.

1) I most definitely was on Shaggy/hornfans for many years.  I’d fall off occasionally when life or school took up too much attention but at least the last couple years I had this same name. That’s how I knew about the site switching over. 

I rarely posted on CR because I found it tedious.  When we switched over I was genuinely shocked by the total 180 that the slant of the board made.  It’s made it more interesting for me to pop in, but over the years I’ve stayed mostly on the football and recruiting boards.

2) Zerohedge is Russian propoganda?  That’s news to me.  I can see the criticism that it’s overly negative gold buggy/conspiratorial, but the vast majority of the posts on Twitter are informative about markets.  

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F250

F250 28775

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, scottsins said:

To put your principle (which I generally agree with) into practice, it would be necessary to create some special expedited process for former officials.  I say that because the thought of officials spending all kinds of time and effort to get an individual limited clearance before sharing stuff would be a clusterfuck, if they had to get a new one every time they wanted to seek advice and counsel from the former dudes.

There already is a process for Interim security clearances.

What I am curious about is what does it mean that Trump "revoked" a clearance?

Was Brennan's clearance current and get downgraded to expired or did he actually have an active security clearance that was changed to current?

 

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bolverk

bolverk 29672

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, GRHorn said:

2) Zerohedge is Russian propoganda?  That’s news to me.  I can see the criticism that it’s overly negative gold buggy/conspiratorial, but the vast majority of the posts on Twitter are informative about markets.  

1

Yes, it is Russian propaganda. From the link I posted above:

Quote

One name that is now known inside ZeroHedge is its founder Daniel Ivandjiisk. He is a Bulgarian immigrant who, while attempting to make his way in finance in the US, got busted for financial crimes, probably pushing him towards a view hostile towards American economics. It also appears that prior to immigrating, Ivandjiisk was a member of the security services in then-communist Bulgaria during its time as a satellite state of the USSR behind the Iron Curtain. It is possible he is personally connected to other veterans of communist bloc intelligence/security services, like Putin. The Prop Or Not article links to a number of investigations into ZeroHedge, one of which finds another name from inside, Colin Lokey.

Lokey stated that while well paid, he quit because he had a hard time churning out material that was explicitly instructed to be promoting the agendas of Putin and his allies like Bashar al-Asad using Russian government positions. ZeroHedge appears to be self-financed, so it’s likely not an operation of the Putin government, but it is acting intentionally as a relay point for Russian propaganda. This article from The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab examines how a number of nominally independent outlets like ZeroHedge, Global Research and Veterans Today often act as proxies for Russian propaganda. I highly recommend DFRL for articles about how information spreads on the internet.

We're not dupes. Bring Zero Hedge to this forum, and you will get negged.

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 5949

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, scottsins said:

This concept makes general sense.  I think the use of the clearance for former officials has usually occurred when current officials seek advice/input from prior ones, to get their experience, perspective, etc.  It’s not used as some carte blanche VIP all-access mechanism.

To put your principle (which I generally agree with) into practice, it would be necessary to create some special expedited process for former officials.  I say that because the thought of officials spending all kinds of time and effort to get an individual limited clearance before sharing stuff would be a clusterfuck, if they had to get a new one every time they wanted to seek advice and counsel from the former dudes.

My understanding is it that it's a collective that also know the other characters in the game from experience.  It's situational but you want to know how the counterpart is likely to react, their limitations, and their strengths.  And collectively seems like a greater body of experience.   

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Fudge Nuggets

Fudge Nuggets 19190

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, David Dennison said:

That's a terrible precedent. Institutional knowledge is real and valuable. Not having these people available weakens our national security.

If a CIA director is doing a bang-up job and kicking all sorts of ass then the new President could.. you know... keep him in his position.

There's no law that says you have to replace the director every time a new President comes in.

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RPM

RPM 26321

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

There's no law that says you have to replace the director every time a new President comes in.

Unless the previous President wasn't what many people would call, a white Republican.

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Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20400

Posted
Posted

GAO:  Trump's wall could waste billions of dollars.

 

Quote

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration could potentially waste billions of dollars on a border wall because it failed to fully account for factors like varying terrain and land ownership along the Southwest border, according to a new report.

The report, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, found that Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for construction of the wall, did not consider the cost of building along each segment of the border, which can vary depending on factors such as topography and land ownership.

The report also found that the agency selected locations for barriers without fully assessing where they were needed to prevent illegal border crossings.




https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/us/politics/trump-border-wall-report.html


 

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Bookman

Bookman 4639

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Captainant said:

You're right, there's no way that Intel agencies may want to read someone back into an operation they used to lead for guidance and advice. It's not like they can just access any information for funsies, you know that right?

If he knew that then his post makes no sense.

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Chuckie Finster

Chuckie Finster 22694

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

GAO:  Trump's wall could waste billions of dollars.

 




https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/us/politics/trump-border-wall-report.html


 

The wall is the perfect idiot-test.  Anyone with even a remote understanding of how shit works in the real world knows that it is an unrealistic solution, and that the price tag and construction duration would be orders of magnitude higher than the rumored numbers should it ever actually be built.

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Js1

Js1 85337

Posted
Posted
22 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

The wall is the perfect idiot-test.  Anyone with even a remote understanding of how shit works in the real world knows that it is an unrealistic solution, and that the price tag and construction duration would be orders of magnitude higher than the rumored numbers should it ever actually be built.

They’re the first to mock COA or anyone else for project costs that end up running higher than promised, while also touting Trump’s wall as going to underbudget Bc “business man”

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pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4814

Posted
Posted

I think Brennan has to know a lot more about Trump than he is saying.   It is like he knows so much bad shit, and he can't say anything specific without stepping on Mueller's toes.  So he has been trying to discredit Trump using his reputation alone.    That's just not enough and it probably confounds him that his opinion is falling on deaf ears. 

I am not a scholar on Brennan, and I accept that there are some shady skeletons in his closet, but I would imagine he justified a lot of his actions by telling himself those acts were done on behalf of the US.    Now to know what he knows about Trump and see him selling the country out, I'm sure he is livid he can't do more.  So yeah, I won't hold him up as a saint due to allegations about his role in some things done during W's reign of stupidity, but I won't throw him out completely, because at his core, he is a patriot, not a traitor. 

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Bojack

Bojack 2081

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Chuckie Finster said:

The wall is the perfect idiot-test.  Anyone with even a remote understanding of how shit works in the real world knows that it is an unrealistic solution, and that the price tag and construction duration would be orders of magnitude higher than the rumored numbers should it ever actually be built.

It's right up there with Noah's Ark for idiot tests.  I'd like to see Dotard and supporters asked if the wall will be built across Big Bend.

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pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4814

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

 

There are so many people with so much on this man, you have to wonder how he sleeps at night without drugs.  Yeah, you can say he sleeps like a baby (because narcissism, totally bought into himself) but if he wasn't worried then why the barrage of tweets against the witch hunt every day?  Like so many of us have said, these actions are not those of the innocent.  These are the actions of a scared and angry bully who has finally pissed off enough of the other kids they are cornering him in the schoolyard for the final beatdown.  And all he is doing is hurling dumbass unfounded accusations as he backs further into that corner.

 

Something else I have noticed is how much less we see of his family now.  I wonder if it is because he is shoving them aside, or they are shrinking away from him for self preservation purposes.   But you know all three of them are bigly complicit in all his illicit actions from laundering to treason. 

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HOOK'EMHOOAH

HOOK'EMHOOAH 1610

Posted
Posted
42 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

There are so many people with so much on this man, you have to wonder how he sleeps at night without drugs.  Yeah, you can say he sleeps like a baby (because narcissism, totally bought into himself) but if he wasn't worried then why the barrage of tweets against the witch hunt every day?  Like so many of us have said, these actions are not those of the innocent.  These are the actions of a scared and angry bully who has finally pissed off enough of the other kids they are cornering him in the schoolyard for the final beatdown.  And all he is doing is hurling dumbass unfounded accusations as he backs further into that corner.

 

Something else I have noticed is how much less we see of his family now.  I wonder if it is because he is shoving them aside, or they are shrinking away from him for self preservation purposes.   But you know all three of them are bigly complicit in all his illicit actions from laundering to treason. 

To covfefe or n't to covfefe.

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Js1

Js1 85337

Posted
Posted

Mueller loves that this guy can't shut the fuck up

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/16/trump-blurts-out-another-lester-holt-moment/?utm_term=.7f9dcb4452f6

Quote

He confessed that his true motivation for revoking former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance was the “rigged witch hunt" that Brennan once “led.”

“I call it the rigged witch hunt; [it] is a sham,” Trump told the Journal’s Peter Nicholas and Michael C. Bender. “And these people led it!”

He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

Quote

In this case, Trump refers directly to the role of Brennan and others in leading the investigation, and then says, “So I think it’s something that had to be done" -- suggesting that this was an action taken in direct response to their participation in the probe. He is saying he is punishing people who were involved in that, which at the very least would seem to create a chilling effect for other would-be critics.

 

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45954

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Js1 said:

They’re the first to mock COA or anyone else for project costs that end up running higher than promised, while also touting Trump’s wall as going to underbudget Bc “business man”

Let's not forget the $250,000 embassy in Jerusalem.

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11362

Posted
Posted

so i was left to ponder why the president is losing his shit over the boston globe. oh, here's why:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/08/15/editorial/Kt0NFFonrxqBI6NqqennvL/story.html

Quote

Journalists are not the enemy


August 15, 2018


A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words.

Replacing a free media with a state-run media has always been a first order of business for any corrupt regime taking over a country. Today in the United States we have a president who has created a mantra that members of the media who do not blatantly support the policies of the current US administration are the “enemy of the people.” This is one of the many lies that have been thrown out by this president, much like an old-time charlatan threw out “magic” dust or water on a hopeful crowd.

For more than two centuries, this foundational American principle has protected journalists at home and served as a model for free nations abroad. Today it is under serious threat. And it sends an alarming signal to despots from Ankara to Moscow, Beijing to Baghdad, that journalists can be treated as a domestic enemy.

The press is necessary to a free society because it does not implicitly trust leaders — from the local planning board to the White House. And it’s not a coincidence that this president — whose financial affairs are murky and whose suspicious pattern of behavior triggered his own Justice Department to appoint an independent counsel to investigate him — has tried so hard to intimidate journalists who provide independent scrutiny.

There was once broad, bipartisan, intergenerational agreement in the United States that the press played this important role. Yet that view is no longer shared by many Americans. “The news media is the enemy of the American people,” is a sentiment endorsed by 48 percent of Republicans surveyed this month by Ipsos polling firm. That poll is not an outlier. One published this week found 51 percent of Republicans considered the press “the enemy of the people rather than an important part of democracy.”

Trump’s attack feedback loop helps explain why his faithful are following him into undemocratic territory. More than a quarter of Americans now say that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior,” including 43 percent of Republicans. Thirteen percent of those surveyed thought that “President Trump should close down mainstream news outlets, like CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.”

Trump can’t outlaw the press from doing its job here, of course. But the model of inciting his supporters in this regard is how 21st-century authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan operate; you don’t need formal censorship to strangle a supply of information.

Trump’s apologists feebly insist that he is referring only to biased coverage, rather than the entire fourth estate. But the president’s own words and long track record show again and again just how deeply cynical and dishonest this argument is.

The nation’s Founding Fathers took for granted that the press would be biased and yet they still explicitly enshrined the freedom of journalists and publishers in the Constitution. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost,” wrote Thomas Jefferson.

American politicians of all parties since the Founders have groused about the media, trying to work the refs by arguing that the news is biased against their tribe. But there was always respect for the press as an institution. It was not that long ago that Ronald Reagan proclaimed, “Our tradition of a free press as a vital part of our democracy is as important as ever.”

“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors,” Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1971. Would that it were still the case. Today, the only media that Trump’s movement accepts as legitimate are those that unquestioningly advocate for its leader personally.

Indeed, it is not just that the president is stoking domestic division for political and personal gain, he’s asking his audiences to follow him into Fantasia. “Just stick with us, don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” he told an audience in Kansas last month. “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” George Orwell put it more gracefully in his novel “1984.” “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

It is an essential endpoint to Trump’s deluge of dishonesty that he now contests objective reality and urges his supporters to do the same. In the first 558 days of his presidency, Trump made 4,229 false or misleading claims, according to a list compiled by The Washington Post. Yet among Trump supporters, only 17 percent think that the administration regularly makes false claims. “Alternative facts” have become de facto.

Lies are antithetical to an informed citizenry, responsible for self-governance. The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a free press to speak the truth to the powerful. To label the press “the enemy of the people” is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic compact we have shared for more than two centuries.

 

it's a very good piece.

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Mo Horn

Mo Horn 8842

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

so i was left to ponder why the president is losing his shit over the boston globe. oh, here's why:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2018/08/15/editorial/Kt0NFFonrxqBI6NqqennvL/story.html

it's a very good piece.

I believe that, or something similar, was in multiple papers around the country. 

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11362

Posted
Posted
30 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

I believe that, or something similar, was in multiple papers around the country. 

Quote

About 350 newspapers all have one thing in common on Thursday: A statement supporting the free press and decrying President Trump's attacks against the media.
From The Martha's Vineyard Times to the Dallas Morning News... from the Yankton County Observer in South Dakota to the Bangor Daily News in Maine... the papers are all running editorials as part of an effort first proposed by the Boston Globe earlier this month.

"This whole project is not anti-Trump. It's really pro-press," The Globe's editorial says.

Each paper wrote its own editorial. The campaign is significant because it moves the conversation about Trump's attacks out of Washington and New York and into communities across the country.

Some of the participants are emphasizing the local nature of most news coverage, and saying Trump's extreme rhetoric -- labeling journalists "enemies of the people," for instance -- hurts everyone, not just the political reporters who enrage him the most.

In Belen, New Mexico, the Valencia County News-Bulletin wrote that "We are not the enemy; We are the people."

In Clinton, Arkansas, the Van Buren County Democrat said Trump's "enemy" talk is disappointing: "Words, after all, matter -- a point we prove every week. And those words, from that pulpit, are unacceptable and utterly, utterly, wrong."

In Athens, Ohio, the Athens News pointed out that local officials inspired by Trump are increasingly going "on the attack."

And the editorial in Benson, Minnesota's Swift County Monitor News was titled "Attacks On Journalists Will Lead To Violence."

A handful of radio and TV stations are also airing editorials on Thursday. But the effort mostly involves newspapers with editorial pages.

Related: These are the newspapers telling Trump journalists are not the enemy

At most papers, especially big dailies, the editorial page is a separate enterprise from the newsroom. Editorials typically reflect the opinion of the publisher, not necessarily the newsroom.

But the campaign has garnered criticism from many Trump supporters, and from some media critics, because of the appearance of a coordinated attack.

"It plays into Trump's narrative that the media are aligned against him," San Francisco Chronicle editorial page editor John Diaz wrote.

Diaz predicted that Trump will call it "collusion" and "will attempt to cite this day of editorials to discredit critical and factual news stories in the future, even though no one involved in those pieces had anything to do with this campaign."

On Fox News, some of Trump's boosters have already tried to do this.

"We're just defending the First Amendment and that shouldn't be a controversial proposition," Pritchard said in response to the criticism about the campaign. "This is about the media's role as a watchdog."

Related: If the media speaks with one voice, Trump will have to listen

Journalists tend to be a snarky bunch, and some dismissed the chance of the editorials having much if any impact.

John Podhoretz of Commentary magazine tweeted on Thursday morning, "Can you imagine anything more boring than reading 350 coordinated editorials? Signed, a former editorial page editor."

Perhaps. Or perhaps there is strength in numbers.

Some of the local editorials tried to differentiate between opinion hosts on TV and just-the-facts reporters in the field.

The Duluth News Tribune in Duluth, Minnesota said its editorial doubled as a "call to stop lumping together as 'the media' both legitimate news-gatherers and those whose practice of propaganda is meant to mislead and misinform for self-serving purposes."

As a practical matter, Thursday's editorials may be mostly preaching to the choir, reinforcing the positive feelings of already-loyal readers.

New polling by Quinnipiac shows that most Americans, 65%, regard the news media as an important part of democracy, not an "enemy." But 26% of respondents, including 51% of Republicans, sided with Trump's "enemy" rhetoric.

Press freedom groups have been sounding alarms about the threats posed by this dehumanizing language.

But some of Trump's supporters have cheered him on, arguing that the press is abusively biased against his presidency.

Related: 16 must-read editorials that capture the spirit of a free press

The New York Times has a list of the participating papers and excerpts from some of the editorials.

Criticizing the news media "is entirely right," The Times said in its own editorial. But "insisting that truths you don't like are 'fake news' is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the 'enemy of the people' is dangerous, period."

In San Diego, the Union-Tribune paired its editorial with a full-page spread titled "How We Restore Faith in Journalism."

"Distrust is not easy to dismantle," the editorial said. "But journalists at The San Diego Union-Tribune and nationwide will keep advocating for a free and fair press. With this president. And the next. And the next. And the next. And all who follow."

National outlets like The Atlantic also joined in the effort.

"The press is neither the enemy of the people nor its ally, but rather its possession," The Atlantic wrote in a piece titled "The Freedom of the Press is Yours."

In the days leading up to Thursday's coordinated effort, Pritchard said it was key that each paper wrote its own message.

"The impact of Trump's assault on journalism looks different in Boise than it does in Boston," she wrote in the pitch to other papers. "Our words will differ. But at least we can agree that such attacks are alarming."

CNNMoney (New York)
First published August 15, 2018: 7:14 PM ET

https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/15/media/newspaper-editorials-free-press-trump/index.html

guess i did not notice yesterday.

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shnsajax

shnsajax 3591

Posted
Posted
19 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

And with Omarosa going on with new tapes this afternoon, he must be fit to be tied.

 

She's at the point to where the tapes actually need to be something or no one is going to give a shit about her and her book anymore. 

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Chad Fuck

Chad Fuck 17681

Posted
Posted
19 minutes ago, shnsajax said:

She's at the point to where the tapes actually need to be something or no one is going to give a shit about her and her book anymore. 

Agreed.  But for him, it's the drama, not the content.  She's getting the eyeballs and that's what he cares about.  

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11362

Posted
Posted
20 minutes ago, shnsajax said:

She's at the point to where the tapes actually need to be something or no one is going to give a shit about her and her book anymore. 

agreed. she better have some kind of goods, or her time in the light is over. i think she's attention whorish enough to understand that.

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Foosters

Foosters 17856

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

The wall is the perfect idiot-test.  Anyone with even a remote understanding of how shit works in the real world knows that it is an unrealistic solution, and that the price tag and construction duration would be orders of magnitude higher than the rumored numbers should it ever actually be built.

lol at conservatives caring about the cost of something. unless it advantages a minority group.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105139

Posted
Posted
19 minutes ago, Pods said:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/trump-military-parade-expected-to-cost-80-million-more-than-estimated.html'

Trump’s military parade is estimated to cost $92 million – $80 million more than earlier estimate

 

 

But man, remember all that money Obama wasted golfing?  Good times, good times.

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